


Ghostwyrm

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Banshees, Demonstrations, Dragon & Human Interactions, Dragons, Fantasy, Freedom Fighters, Gen, Ghosts, Omens & Portents, Original Fiction, Partnership, Protectiveness, Revenge, Science Fiction, Superstition, Terrorism, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 07:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2642888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a war of dragons, sometimes superstition and terror are the most powerful weapons of all. A young freedom fighter introduces his allies to his new partner, and their new weapon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghostwyrm

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt of: "Green wasn't an unusual colour for a dragon, but fluorescent green?" Went randomly much darker on me, because I'm still in a mood. *shrugs sheepishly*

The night was cold and clouded, so pitch black down under the trees that hands couldn't be seen in front of faces. Even out here, on the low slopes of the mountain just above the tree line, it was blasted muggy.

"What am I here for again, Martinez?" my companion grumbled, his hands stuck determinedly under his armpits while he bounced angrily on his heels. I admit it, I did smirk a little bit. I couldn't really help it.

"Why, you're here to see our new secret weapon, Jorge," I said, entirely too smugly, and he glared at me.

"Really?" he growled. "Because I thought I was here to freeze to death on a blasted hillside. Are we going to get _on_ with it sometime tonight?"

I didn't answer immediately. I'd caught a noise on the edge of my hearing, so perfectly timed that I'd have sworn she was listening in, the distinctive, eerie whistling coming up across the mountain saddle almost on the heels of his words. Oh, she'd heard him. My beauty must have heard him.

"Now that you mention it," I murmured, with maybe a slight and entirely involuntary manic edge to it. Jorge shot a suspicious glance my way, opening his mouth to snarl something, when my darling crested the saddle in a low screaming sweep and made herself abruptly and entirely known.

She was _beautiful_. Then as always, she was gorgeous beyond measure. She cleared the air with that warbling scream of hers, that eerie ululating whoop, her powerful wings slashes of green luminescence in the darkness. She dove across us from above as she crested, a massive spectral form gleaming in the darkness as it passed over our heads in a rush of wind and terror, gliding low over the treeline before banking back, and I watched with pure, unadulterated glee as Jorge pitched himself to the ground with a terrified yell in the face of her. She came back over us again, pulling herself into a slow-rising hover to blast us face-first with her scream, her long, serpentine neck stooped to us before flinging itself skywards, the pitch rising all the while until at the top of its arc it could have killed any living being in its path. She broke it with a triumphant screech, her glee entirely matching mine, before she brought her wings down in a back-breaking sweep and pitched herself back over the saddle into the darkness of the slopes beyond.

It must have taken about a minute and a half, all told. The entire encounter. Ninety seconds of mind-numbing, terrifying glory, the queen of my heart in all her gleeful malice in front of us, and then she was gone, diving back under the cover of the forests on the other side of the saddle. A pitch-perfect demonstration, not even two minutes in length.

"What the flying _fuck_ was that!?!" Jorge yelled, spitting dirt out of his mouth as he scrambled up onto his hands and knees and glaring wild-eyed at me as I belatedly realised I was laughing like a loon. "Jesus _fuck_ , Jesus wept, what is the _matter_ with you! You ... you ... What the _fuck_?!"

I made a concerted effort to stop laughing. Really, I did. I clapped my hands over my mouth and deliberately focused on the thunder of my heartbeat until it came down somewhat out of my adrenal joy, hiccuping inanely to myself the whole while. I'm not a berserker, I swear I'm not, but she brings me such joy, my dragon. She sows such wild and manic happiness in me.

"... That was _Eris_ ," I managed, after a few minutes. "That was our new secret weapon, Jorge. Isn't she _beautiful_?"

He stared at me. Still on his hands and knees, entirely uncaring that he was just about muck to his eyeballs. He stared at me like the utter loon that I was, and slowly, carefully, shook his head.

"What the hell have you been up to, Emil?" he murmured, soft and considering as he looked at me. "That was no dragon. That was no kind of dragon I've ever seen. Where have you _been_ , hmm?"

I grinned at him. It probably wasn't very reassuring. 

"The Noralos Cave Systems," I answered quietly, still quivering happily to myself. "I found her there, Jorge. I met her, I found her. She's ... Oh, she's a fluke of nature, as far as I can tell. Natural bioluminescence. I don't know why she didn't just end up albino, instead, but who the hell knows. She's a whooper-wyrm, primarily. A screamer and a grappler. Nothing special, I suppose you could argue, except for the shining. She scares people _shitless_ , Jorge. People, dragons. She gives them the screaming horrors like you wouldn't _believe_."

"Oh, I believe," he said, finally getting himself to his feet. His hands were shaking, I noticed. They were trembling violently at his sides. But his face was contemplative. His eyes, those dark, beady windows that I'd always admired, were cold and clear and thoughtful as he looked at me. "She looks like a ghost. That's what I thought. A dragon banshee. She looks like an omen of death."

I nodded rapidly, spreading my arms out by my sides. Behind me, I heard the unsubtle rustling and massive lope as she came up on us. Over the ground, this time, and with her luminescence dimmed. Outside the shelter of trees or caves, she preferred to keep herself as low-profile as possible. It wasn't completely effective. She still shone, faintly, a green demon loping across the hillside, a slender ghostwyrm grinning a shining grin in the darkness. But she tried, my darling. She did try.

"We're calling her a spectral green," I said, while she curled her head over my shoulder and pressed her great skull into my breastbone happily. I curled myself around, hugging her as I looked at him. "For obvious reasons, I guess. She's going to help us, Jorge. She's going to help us drive the enemy back. I asked her to, and she said she would. She's willing to strike such terror in their dragons' hearts that they'll never willingly cross our borders again. That's why you had to see her. That's why you had to know. We can't do it alone. You've got the resources to help me base her, so that they can't find her or hurt her. But we can help you win, if you'll help us hide. We can show them the face of death, and have them run before it."

{Emil mine,} she purred in agreement, unwinding her head to look at Jorge with her poisonous-green eyes, shy and hopeful and determined. {Scare who hurt him. Promise you. Help, yes?}

Jorge looked at us, for a long second. He looked at me, all wild and happy and vicious, and at Eris, all sleek and spectral and shy, and then I saw those black beads of his move from contemplative to calculating, and from there to a dark, clear shining of their own. The light of industry, I'd heard it said. The light of war.

"Help, yes," he murmured back, and I knew in that moment that we were golden, my beautiful ghostwyrm and I. I knew that war and terror and the screams of our enemy lay before us, and that night on the mountain side, in the dark and the cold, I found it _glorious_.

And Eris, my queen, my beauty, my heart, found it not displeasing either.


End file.
